News & Notes
At AERA, I attended a session on
Federal Funding Opportunities, with
panelists from IES, NSF, and NIH.
Although I didn't learn much that I
hadn't known before, the session was
useful as a reminder of the funding
possibilities at each of these agencies.

Allen Ruby spoke for IES. He described
the familiar landscape of IES
competitions and goals, at the same time
offering several useful insights about
developing competitive proposals. IES,
he explained, actively seeks high quality
proposals. He urged proposal writers to
contact program officers for help and
advice. He characterized them as more
than willing to listen to ideas, provide
feedback on proposal drafts, and
suggest appropriate competitions. He
advised proposal writers to write for the
generalists who serve on every panel
and simultaneously to provide evidence
for the panel experts to substantiate that
your team has the needed expertise to
get the job done. He also reminded us
that analyses of extant databases may be
funded under Goal 1. These databases
need not include student outcomes,
provided they do include data on
factors with strong empirical or
theoretical links to student outcomes.
The example he offered was the Schools
and Staffing Survey and the Teacher

Follow-up Survey, which together allow
estimation of teacher attrition-but
include no information on student
outcomes.

Janice Earle emphasized that because
content matters at NSF, proposals must
have a STEM focus. On the other hand,
she pointed out that NSF funds a
number of programs with real potential
for education researchers, among them
Research and Evaluation on Education
in Science and Engineering (REESE),
Discovery Research K-12 (DRK12), and
Innovative Technology Experiences for
Students and Teachers (ITEST). She
mentioned a new REESE strand,
"Cyber-enabled Discovery and
Innovation," which struck me as
particularly promising for our Ed Tech
colleagues. And those of you interested
in math and science teaching have a
potential outlet in DRK-12 proposals,
whose purpose is improving K-12
teaching of science and mathematics.
Janice also mentioned the agency's
concern with the underrepresentation
among STEM professionals of women,
racial and ethnic minorities, and people
with disabilities. She alluded to the GSE
(Research on Gender in Science and
Engineering) and RDE (Research in
Disabilities Education) programs that
support work in these areas.

Finally, Brett Miller of NICHD's Child
Development and Behavior Branch
listed an impressive number of NIH
programs of interest to education
researchers. These included "Social and
Affective Development, and Child
Maltreatment and Violence," "Early
Learning and School Readiness,"
"Reading, Writing, and Related
Learning Disabilities," and "Language,
Bilingualism and Biliteracy," to name
only a few. He reiterated Ruby's advice
about the importance of contacting
program officers and alluded somewhat
matter-of-factly to the strong likelihood
that first submissions get rejected. NIH
researchers have come to terms the
necessity of submitting more than once
before being funded.

What at NIH is a given ought to become
an operating principle for all of us-if it
isn't already. In proposal writing,
rejection is to be expected, and learning
from rejection rather than rejection itself
is what distinguishes successful from
unsuccessful grant getters. Although
few of us are deterred from
resubmitting a rejected manuscript-
some people I know plot a sequence of
submissions-many people never
resubmit a rejected proposal. But the
resilient proposal writer, once over the
initial sting of rejection, will take full
advantage of what an earnest first try
and critical feedback provide: an
opportunity to be even more
competitive the next time around. With
the increasing emphasis we all feel
about bringing in external funds, our
mantra needs to become, "If at first you
don't succeed..."

A word about the U. S. News & World
Reports rankings.

A couple of you have asked why our
research expenditures seem so low
relative to the good news we hear about
submissions and new awards, several of
which -in and of themselves-
approach the total our ranking is based
upon. In large part, the answer rests
upon the distinction between
expenditures and award totals. U. S.
News & World Reports uses expenditures;
in the ORB and elsewhere, we report
total funding for submissions and new
awards. In 2005-2006, for example, the
total amount of active funded projects in
the college exceeded $23 million, while
research expenditures were $6.4 million.

March 2008 Awards
Congratulations go out to Tom Dana
(STL) and Stephen Pape (STL) for their
University of South Florida award, and
to Elizabeth Yeager (STL) for her
Center for Civic Education award.

Good luck to Mary Jo Koroly (CPETS),
Lynda Hayes (PKY) and Rose Pringle
(STL) for their submission to the
National Science Foundation and to
Catherine Emihovich (Dean's Area) for
her submission to the US Department of
Education.

For more details about these awards, see
the table on the next page. Paul